News and Announcements

New version of apps launched

September 2016

Nepali Language Resource Center, NLRC, is pleased to announce the launch of a newer version of its apps.

The most noticeable aspect for our end users is the new look of the apps. The development team has worked hard over the past few months to make various improvements.

The grammar engine that powers the Nepali Spell Checker has been updated to incorporate more rules. In addition, newer terms have been added to the dictionary. The "Auto correct common errors" feature has been improved significantly, which means that you will be able to get the common errors corrected with ease.

The front-end has been modernized and the look of the apps simplified. With the ubiquity of modern browsers, the apps have benefited from them by taking advantages of the new features available in the newer versions of browsers and also by not having to maintain code that was necessary to support the older versions.

Going forward, the apps will support the current and previous release of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer 11 on desktop and mobile. The general website will continue to work with all major browsers.

The content size has decreased and the content delivery has been optimized using a content delivery network. In addition, the overall performance of the apps has improved. The apps now make a fewer number of network roundtrips and the roundtrip times have been optimized.

What's next?

If you like to see new features added to the apps, this is a good time to let us know about such enhancement requests. As we now start working on the next version, we will be prioritizing the requests and reviewing the feedback we have received.

We hope that the apps, including Nepali Spell Checker, continue to add value to you and that they make it easier for you to use Nepali in the digital medium.

Thank you for continuing to provide your feedback. The positive feedback we have received has helped us improve the quality of the apps and has helped plan and prioritize its improvements.More on the "Autocorrect common errors" feature

We had launched an experimental feature for Nepali Spell Checker to autocorrect common errors. Based on feedback from our users that highlighted how the feature had made it easier for them to use the spell checker, and based on its popularity in a short period of time, we have graduated this experimental feature to the core product.

The "Autocorrect common errors" feature now detects more errors. The spell checker consists of a dataset of common incorrect terms and their correct forms on which the autocorrect feature depends. The feature looks at the set and then uses grammar rules to detect a wide variety of common errors. In order to make sure that the results returned by the autocorrect feature are correct, the dataset has been manually verified by the Nepali language subject-matter experts. Whenever an incorrect form of a term can have more than one correct forms, the autocorrect feature does not automatically correct the term, but rather presents all possible correct forms, ranked in descending order of relevancy, back to the user.

The autocorrect feature has been hugely popular and the insights obtained from its use during its experimental phase showed that it saved a lot of time to our users, as they did not have to spend time accepting suggestions for obvious errors. With this feature, now the users can concentrate more on aspects other than manually clicking "Replace" or "Replace All" buttons to accept suggestions for the obvious errors. As the app matures, the dataset and the rules will continue to improve providing more value to our users.

Other experimental features

One feature we have been experimenting is the ability for our users to add custom terms to their personal dictionary. We plan to spend more time on this feature in the future. If users want the spell checker to ignore certain terms for them, this feature will provide a way for them to add such custom terms to their personal dictionary, that way the custom terms are not flagged as incorrect for them, but will still be flagged as incorrect for other users. For this to happen, we need to make sure the app runs in a personalized way, and we have made that possible by allowing users to sign in to the app. The users do not have to maintain a separate set of username and password with us. Instead, they can use their existing Google account as a way to sign in to the app, to make use of this feature. If the users find a need to update, add or delete the custom terms from their personal dictionary, they will be able to do so as well from the app.

In addition to the improvements users will notice, we have planned many improvements to the back-end of the app. We continuously evaluate the spell checker rules and are in the process of refactoring the logic that brings all the involved pieces together. Such refactoring process will also include utilizing features that have already been adopted by similar tools used by other languages. As the Nepali characters can now easily take advantage of the UTF-8 character encoding, we can now easily utilize various tools that have already been developed and used by other languages. This will make maintaining the spell checker rules much easier, and it will also mean that our Nepali language subject-matter experts can contribute more to refining the rules without having to understand the technical details on how the logic is implemented in the app. This will be beneficial to our development team as well as they do not have to worry much about the language specific details, as that aspect can be, to a great extent, delegated to the Nepali language subject-matter experts.

We thank you for your continued interest and support.
Nepali Language Resource Center